Deborphan cleanup until no more orphaned packages left

Table of Contents

Deborphan

Deborphan removes packages it thinks your system doesn't need anymore. It is a great tool for package cleanup and maintenance. Sometimes, after cleaning up the packages, it will find new packages that are orphaned (because you just cleaned up).

This is a small script that cleans up with deborphan until there is nothing more to cleanup.

Script

First install deborphan, otherwise the script will not work:

apt-get install deborphan

This is the script:

#!/bin/bash
# run deborphan and remove the output packages untill there are no more
while true; do
if [[ $(deborphan --guess-all) ]]; then
apt-get purge `deborphan --guess-all`
apt-get --purge autoremove
else
break
fi
done

Make sure to review the packages that are going to be deleted, not keeping an eye could result in a broken system. If you add -y you're on your own.